


Queen of Hel and Knight of Death

by ishala8



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Master of Death, Norse Mythology - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 13:00:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5968209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishala8/pseuds/ishala8
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hela does not appreciate Thanos’ treatment of her father so she calls in a favour to remedy the situation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Queen of Hel and Knight of Death

**Author's Note:**

> ABANDONED, but I have included a summary of where the fic was going at the end.
> 
> [](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)  
> This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).

** Queen of Hel and Knight of Death **

::

Out of all of Loki’s children, Hela has spent the most time around him. While Sleipnir has always been closest to him in proximity, Loki had never been allowed near his firstborn while in Asgard. It would not do for all the nine realms to learn that the Asgardian prince had fathered a horse! No, the youngest prince stood out enough without claiming familiar relations with his father’s prize stallion. Hela, on the other hand, had not been born on Asgard and had somewhat escaped the All-Father’s controlling influence.

Loki had met Hela’s mother, Angrboda, when he was sent to Jötunheimr with some warriors to reaffirm the frost giants’ loyalty to Asgard. Whispers of rebellion had reached the All-Father’s ears and he had not been prepared to let them go without comment. He had been drawn to the female jötunn’s untameable spirit and had made it a habit to visit her whenever he could escape Heimdall’s all-seeing gaze.

Hela had been the first to result from their liaison, only to be soon followed by Jormungand and Fenrir. For the twelve years Hela had known her father, he had been kind, loving, mischievous and fiercely protective of his children. When Odin had found out about Angrboda, a company of Asgard’s finest warriors had been dispatched with all the due haste. Loki had made it too late to save Angrboda, but Hela could remember how he stood unflinchingly before Asgard’s mightiest to defend his children.

It hadn’t done much good, of course. Odin had thrown Jormungand into Midgard’s waters, chained Fenrir in places unknown and, in a show of goodwill to placate his youngest son, had named his only daughter queen of Hel.

The realm of the dead was vast, you see. Death ruled over it all, but did not much care about the souls that did not deserve punishment. Death had claimed Niflheim, the house of the dishonoured dead, as her own and allowed Odin to rule over the halls of Valhala, were the honoured dead resided. Hel was the unremarkable realm. It claimed all the souls that were neither honoured nor dishonoured; the ordinary souls whose life had left no mark behind. While Death held much indifference about Hel, the realm had not been Odin’s to give away. Hela had had her work cut out for her trying to assert her claim, but in the end, she had managed to win Death’s favour.

Hela would not say she was friends with Death, or that she even respected the older woman. They had an amicable working relationship and that was it. This is why when Death’s chosen knight had seen it fit to capture Hela’s father, interrogate him and lock him so deep in his own mind that he could no longer control his own body, Hela had felt no compunction when she turned to the one holding power over Death and asked him to rid the world of the Mad Titan.

::

In the grand scheme of things, a disarming spell sent towards a cowering teenager is a mundane occurrence. However, that one spell Harry James Potter sent towards Draco Lucius Malfoy as an afterthought while escaping from the Malfoy Mansion was the extreme opposite of mundane. That one spell changed the world and, unbeknownst to Harry or Draco, _all_ worlds in the universe.

After the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry snapped the Elder Wand, left the Resurrection Stone in the Forbidden Forest, kept the Invisibility Cloak safe in his possession and went on with his life. He dated Ginny, finished school, got accepted into Auror training, became an expert in avoiding the press and did his best to forget about the new scar that had appeared on his body.

The day he had escaped from Malfoy Manor, the symbol of the Deathly Hallows had appeared like a brand on the hollow below his neck, right where Xenophilius’ pendant had rested on the older man. Harry had seen every healer imaginable and no one could do anything about the mark. All they could tell him was that it could not be healed, it was not a curse scar and it was not negatively affecting him in any way.

It wasn’t until three years after the war that a healer told him something different. He had gone to visit Hogwarts for a Defence demonstration with some fellow Aurors, at the end of which he had stayed behind to catch up with his old professors. Stopping by the Hospital Wing to greet the elderly matron in whose tender mercies he had spent much of his school career, he had been complemented on his health.

Madam Pomfrey had jokingly scanned him with her wand, only to marvel at how perfect his charts came back. According to her, his childhood malnutrition was gone, his eyesight had been corrected and his physical condition was ideal. She had complemented him on his improved health, only for Harry to reluctantly admit that he had not taken any steps to achieve such a goal. His malnutrition and eyesight had corrected themselves, and he kept acing the Auror fitness tests with hardly any effort.

It was that visit that led him to look deeper into the mark, only to find that not only was it not negatively affecting him, but it was improving his overall physical condition. More worryingly, since the day he had received the mark, his body had not aged one bit. At that point, Harry had started to develop a niggling theory as to what had happened to him, a theory that he did not want to test nor confirm.

Irrespective of Harry’s wishes, his theory was confirmed true in August 2001. At age 21, Harry James Potter survived being hit by the Killing Curse for the third time.  There were no witnesses sans the single Dark Wizard Harry had been chasing after, and no adverse side effects. This time, Harry didn’t even go down, he simply walked through the wall of green light.

His relationship with Ginny fell apart five months later when Ginny gave Harry an ultimatum – he either stopped taking the most dangerous cases by himself or she walked out. When Harry explained that he was the only one who could take the cases as he could not be killed, she made the choice for him and simply walked out, not once looking back. She had seen the mark, understood what it meant and realised her boyfriend was not aging. She had simply refused to accept what that meant for her.

It was a month after his breakup that he was first visited by Hela. She came to him in sleep, invading his dreams curious about the human who held such power over her colleague. Harry believed her to be a figment of his imagination and she allowed his beliefs as she shared with him stories about the Nine Realms. Then one day, their relationship changed.

“You are real, aren’t you?” questioned Harry one night when he saw her walking towards him through the mist surrounding them in the dreamscape.

Hela smiled and nodded. Her long black hair fluttered at non-existing wind and her white grown fluttered eerily around her, but what truly intrigued Harry was the way the two halves of her face were manipulated into a smile.

It was Hela’s physical appearance that had clued him into the reality of her existence. He had been studying a new case about some obscure magical cult sacrificing to some of the Old Norse gods when he had come across Hela’s name. Looking into the texts the Auror department had confiscated from the cult, he had found her description. Blackest hair, bottomless eyes, willowy frame, white gown and dichromatic skin – her left half black like the darkest night and her right white like the palest snow.

Looking at her now, studying the raised details adorning the left half of her body in something that half resembled decay and half intricate engravings, he could not fathom ever coming up with her on his own. She was too intricate, too precise and considering he had never heard of her before their first meeting, the parallels were too great for him to have created her.

“So all those stories you told me, about elves and dwarves and giants and demons, are they all true as well?” he asked again to clarify. He was pretty sure they were. The cults’ scripts also mentioned them; in full, gory detail.

“As much as any story passed through time by word of mouth can be,” she agreed easily, her voice resonating like sparkling waters and wailing shrieks.

“So, Midgard, huh?” Harry’s bashfulness conveyed by that question wasn’t even for show. This whole experience was entirely too weird. He was talking to the Queen of Hel! “Oh, sorry about the sacrifice thing, by the way! I hope it isn’t harmful to you guys because we really don’t allow such things down here anymore.”

“Relax, Harry,” she laughed, taking a seat at the decaying log that appeared through the mist. “Enough souls arrive at our halls each day without needless sacrifices. We don’t require them. Humans merely believe that if they personally deliver us the souls we are more open to their prayers. Truth is, we hardly care to interfere in human affairs.”

“But you are interfering here, aren’t you?” asked Harry, despite having an idea of why that might be.

“You are the Master of Death – hardly a human, much less a mortal,” she explained calmly. “And just because we don’t care to interfere does not mean we are forbidden from doing so.”

“Well then, my queen,” begun Harry, grinning ruefully at the title, “do you care to explain what my title means? Or even better, how I am to get rid of it?”

She laughed. “There is only ever going to be one Master of Death, Harry. Death thought she was so smart handing out trinkets and letting them deliver her souls one after another. She got complacent and left them in this world for too long.”

“I don’t understand,” admitted Harry, feeling like an errant student back in Snape’s Potions class.

“Magic, especially magic _we_ have pulled from the branches of the Yggdrasil, grows sentient the longer it is left to interact with any one world. It is why all human spells can be undone by time and wear. Magic needs to return back to the World Tree, that is the nature of things.” She wove her words like a narrative, one of many Harry had heard from her lips. “The Deathly Hallows, as you call them, were once ordinary objects. What made them special was that they carried magic drawn from the branches of the Yggdrasil by Death herself.

“Magic grows restless when it stays in one place for long. However, it was too weak to go against its master as it had been split between the three Hallows. It needed a new master – a sentient vessel that would allow it to interact with the world.  When you brought all Hallows under your possession, you became that vessel. The magic interacted to become strong enough to leave the objects it had been bound to and move into your body. Had you still been in possession of the Elder Wand and the Resurrection Stone you would have found that they are nothing more than a piece of wood and a pebble. As things stand, your Cloak is now nothing more than an ordinary invisibility cloak that will eventually wear in time.”

“So what?” demanded Harry, trying to put aside the pain it caused him to hear that his father’s cloak was now prone to wear and destruction. “You are saying that magic is controlling me?”

“The very opposite actually,” she replied casually. “It deemed you a better master than Death and gave up control to you. Being in possession of this magic merely means that you have a direct link to Death’s magic and, if you allow yourself to open up further, to the Yggdrasil. Death cannot claim you as the magic within you no longer obeys her. It strengthens your soul with Death’s own magic and rebels against her in every possible way to punish her for abandoning it in this realm. It will not harm you. Soon enough, its resolve will be so merged with your own that it won’t even be a separate entity.”

“It will take me over?” Now if _that_ wasn’t a terrifying possibility Harry didn’t know _what_ was.

“No, it will merely pass through you on its way back to the World Tree. All souls are connected to it and make easy pathways to its branches. It is merely making sure that your soul and body are capable of resisting Death before it fully transfers over. It is passing on its strength of will and desires to you. In a way, it is changing you, making sure that you will never obey Death because you will never have to and because you will never want to.” She must have seen the confusion on his face because she signed. “You will understand in time.”

Harry shuddered. Yup! That was disturbing. He never wanted to imagine a time when he simply did not desire Death because some stubborn piece of magic had changed his very soul to erase that desire in a last rebellious act against its previous master. Note to self: never piss off magic.

“I still don’t understand. How does that make me Master of Death?”

“You have an intimate knowledge of her magic,” explained a bemused Hela. “You will mimic it even subconsciously. The Yggdrasil will recognise any spell you cast as one of hers and since it will be fuelled by the experiences of the magic that will have returned to its branches, it will understand the difference, but will simply refuse to honour it in any way that benefits Death. That means that any spell you cast will be irreversible by anyone other than you or magic itself, but that Death will be the one to feel the backlash should you fail to cancel it. You are holding Death’s leash because magic decreed it so.”

“So you are basically saying that I am to live alone for all eternity, but that’s okay because I won’t actually want to die and it won’t actually be that bad because I get to play practical jokes on Death,” clarified Harry bitterly.

“Where did the alone come from?” asked Hela with a small, knowing smile. Damn undead, all-knowing goddesses.

“I am immortal,” stated Harry. That statement should of itself clarify Harry’s dilemma.

“And so are practically forty percent of the galaxy,” she replied bemusedly.

“But there are no other immortals on Earth,” persisted Harry. “Even you are not actually here, you merely visit my dreams.”

“That’s beside the point, I could be there if I wanted to but jumping between worlds and keeping up a disguise just to visit you every now and again takes too much power. As for the rest, you will actually be surprised by the number of immortals living on or passing through Midgard.”

“Why would anyone want to do that?” questioned the newly deemed immortal uncomprehendingly. If there were thousands of worlds out there, each possessing magic, advanced technology, superior intellect or prolonged lifespans, why would anyone want to mingle with humans?

She seemed to hesitate for a moment before shaking her head and formulating her answer. “Midgard is the most important out of all the Nine Realms. It is the world at the centre of everything – the portal between the magical and the mundane. The Yggdrasil is the source of all magic and in its branches it supports the magical realms. The Nine Realms do not exist in the same plane as the rest of the world. Only Midgard has a foothold on both planes. The only way to enter or exit the Nine Realms is through Midgard. Your world is the gateway to freedom or to magic. That is why everyone covets it and why Asgard protects it so fiercely.”

Okay, this conversation was getting too serious too quickly. The implications of what Hela was suggesting were huge and Harry was not sure he was prepared to contemplate them. Instead he focussed on the fact that Hela was definitely not authorised to part with this information.

“Why are you telling me all this? The stories, the secrets, all of it?”

“You are interesting and I have nothing better to do.” She shrugged nonchalantly. “Not to mention that it’s never wise to make an enemy of your boss’ boss.”

“I’m much more useful to you as a friend, huh?” stated Harry ruefully.

“Maybe you will be, maybe you won’t. Either way you make for good company, something I find myself in desperate need of.”

And that was that as far as both of them were concerned. Their nightly meeting continued, and no words were needed to affirm the strength of their friendship. If Hela delivered news of Harry’s deceased family and if Harry checked out cases she was curious about, that was nobody’s business but their own.

::

It was a night in late 2005 when Harry went to sleep only to find Hela pacing angrily in his dreamscape. He had had an easy day researching some obscure spells at the Ministry Library, having quit the Aurors to pursue his own endeavours and only work with them on a consulting base, so he had the patience to accommodate the fuming goddess. Settling on one of the many boulders littering the misty landscape, he waited her out.

Hela growled and muttered under her breath and threw blasts of magic at dead, decaying trees and generally made a nuisance of herself. Harry ducked out of the way of her blasts, hummed understandingly at her incoherent tirades and manipulated wisps of mist into animal shapes to stave off boredom. Their relationship had long since settled into one of easy friendship so neither really cared about offending the other with their behaviour.

When Hela finally calmed down, she sat across from Harry and pierced him with a serious look.

“There is someone I need you to kill,” she stated evenly.

“And you can’t do it because…” questioned Harry.

“Death favours him,” explained Hela in frustration. “The only way to guarantee he stays dead is if you are the one to do it. Death cannot go against your will.”

“Ok,” pacified Harry quickly, seeing the unholy gleam that was developing in her eyes. “So what did this mystery target do to deserve Death?”

“He took my father!” she uttered in an icy cold voice that spoke of the realm she ruled over. “Oh, he also destroyed a couple hundred worlds and civilisations,” she added as an afterthought.

Harry blinked as he tried to take that in. Ok, first Hela suddenly had a father. He had no idea why, but he had believed gods to simply pop into existence, maybe like fruit on the Yggdrasil’s branches. The fact that Hela had a _father_ blindsided him. Three years into their friendship and only _now_ does she think to mention that titbit of information? Harry knew he should have studied those texts more before handing them to the Unspeakables.

That aside, were his ears deceiving him of had Hela just said that there was someone out there who destroyed worlds for fun? It would have been a useful piece of information to impart on Earth’s self-appointed magical guardian.

Taking a deep breath, Harry focused his thoughts so he could tackle one thing at the time.

“Who is he, the one Death favours?” he asked calmly, trying to get the goddess to calm down and explain the situation rationally. It seemed to work as she took a deep breath to centre herself and went into what Harry had deemed her narrative mode.

“Thanos, the Mad Titan,” she said ominously. “He courts Death, showering her with souls he thinks she will value and she, in turn, favours him, allowing him to heal from impossible injuries and gifting him with strength much greater than others of his species.”

“And by taking your father, you mean…” prompted Harry. He would get to the part where Hela had never before mentioned the man in a moment.

“He captured him, tortured him and invaded his mind,” she clarified.

“Why?”

She sighed. “My father has had a hard time of it lately, he fell into darkness and made himself an easy target. However, before falling, he saw something on Midgard, something that Thanos desires. You call it the Tesseract and think it is an ancient source of power. In truth, it is but one in a set of six. We know them as the Infinity Stones or Soul Gems, they are the fruit of the Yggdrasil and each is crystallised magic in its most basic form. The Yggdrasil’s magic has power over six aspects of the universe and those six gems are the essence of the magic controlling each.”

Harry did his best to contain his smugness (Because hello? The giant tree _did_ have fruit!) and focus more on the problem at hand. Why someone would want the stone was obvious, magic equals power and power equals fulfilled desire. This guy wanted Death and believed having power would make him have her. Why he didn’t just kill himself if Death was his wish, Harry did not know, but that was beside the point.

“You said six aspects,” he pressed. “What are they?”

She sighed in frustration, the way she only did when she was not meant to be imparting this information but could care less about what she was meant or was not meant to do.

“Mind, soul, space, time, reality and power,” she explained. “Those are the only things magic can affect, control or interfere with. The Tesseract controls space, meaning that Thanos can use it to travel anywhere, even into the Nine Realms. He already possesses the Mind and Time Gems, while the rest have been hidden by the All-Father all across the Nine Realms.”

“So he is coming here,” concluded Harry. It only made sense. Earth was the gate to the Nine Worlds and held the Tesseract which appeared to be the only other way in. It would have to be Thanos’ first stop which was why Hela was asking Harry to kill him. He was at the right place, holding the right kind of power.

“No he is not,” contradicted Hela, “my father is.”

After three years of being friends with the Queen of Hel, Harry had learned that she enjoyed playing the storyteller. She was a master at giving just enough information to create suspense, only to leave her audience hanging and begging for her to continue with the story. She always did continue, but she seemed to delight in making Harry pry each piece of information from her like an eager pre-schooler.

“Hela,” he signed in exasperation, “you want my help and I _want_ to help. Just give me the damn facts already!”

“Humans,” she huffed in vexation. “Fine! Thanos has the Mind and Time Gems. He is too powerful to want to involve himself directly when he could spend his time gifting Death with countless of souls he kills through the use of the Time Gem. My father is incredibly powerful, but even he could not resist the power of the Mind Gem. Now Thanos is using my father’s body and magic to claim the Space Gem for himself.

“What you need to do, is force Thanos to come to you. If you help my father throw off the effects of the Mind Gem, then Thanos will lose his agent on Midgard and have to come finish the task himself as none of his army is strong enough to do it for him.”

“Why can’t you help your father yourself?” asked Harry, curious about the answer, only to regret asking it when Hela’s countenance clouded in anger.

“My father is not allowed to come into contact with any of his children,” she growled furiously. “The All-Father will not allow it.”

“How come? What power does Odin hold over your father?”

“My father is his son,” she spat. “Or he thought himself to be. I visit his dreams – Odin does not have enough power to detect that. It is how we keep tabs on each other and how I know what is happening to him now. My father is Loki, God of Chaos, Lies and Mischief, and the younger of the two princes of Asgard. He was claimed by Odin as a trophy of war to signify his victory over the Frost Giants – he was Jötunheimr’s youngest prince – only to be adopted into the family for real by Frigga. He discovered this only recently and that is what drove him into darkness.”

“And your mother?” Harry voiced the question tentatively, understanding that this was a touchy topic for the goddess.

“Dead. She was a Frost Giant who was killed by Odin’s guard when he discovered her dalliance with my father.”

Harry made a disbelieving face at that. “So Frost Giant prince and Frost Giant lady have children together but don’t realise they are from the same race?”

“They were hiding their relationship from Heimdall and Odin,” she responded with a pointed glare. “Frost Giants are natural shape shifters and my father knew all the secret paths along the branches of the Yggdrasil. They never met in the same guise or in the same world. It is why my siblings and I all have such different powers and characteristics.”

Harry rubbed his temples, feeling the oncoming headache. And here he was thinking sleeping was supposed to be restful.

“Siblings?”

“Jormungand, the Midgard Serpent which sleeps in your deepest oceans and Fenrir, the giant wolf prophesised to bring about the All-Father’s demise at the end of time.”

“Ah, of course.”

::

They had decided that Hela would notify Harry the moment she located her father’s presence on Midgard and it would be up to Harry to take it from there. Due to this agreement, Harry was not overly surprised to find himself jolted awake in the middle of the night with just a pair of coordinates that had randomly appeared in his head. Quickly changing into his dragonhide armour, he silently cursed the dichromatic goddess for waking up with what had felt like lightning coursing through his body.

Apparating to the given coordinates, he only took a moment to realise that he was somewhere in France before ducking out of the way of an errant hammer. Three men in funny clothing were battling it out on his left and in front of him, a fourth man sat upon the cliff face, watching them with a rather creepy smile. Green and black leather, gold accessories – he was the one.

Counting on the sounds of battle to mask the sound of Apparition, Harry Disapparated once more (just in time too as that same hammer zoomed back through his location) only to appear behind Loki. Wand out at the ready, he threw a strong stunning spell at the god and stopped only long enough to make sure it worked before grabbing him and Apparating back to Grimmauld Place.

Making sure the wards he had prepared to keep the god contained had gone up behind him, he threw Loki on his couch and cast an Incarcerous over him for good measure. Then he stared at the bound man on his couch and felt his eye twitch in irritation. _Now_ what?

::

As the three heroes climb up from the wreckage caused by their battle, they look around them lost for words and ideas as to what comes next.

“So, are we done here?” asks Captain America uncertainly, but with a voice still as commanding as the one he had used to command troops during the war.

Thor looks around, trying to catch his breath only to get angrier and angrier with what he sees.

“Where is Loki?” he demands furiously.

::

It was with the mind-controlled God of Chaos, Lies and Mischief stunned and bound on his couch that Harry laid down and went to sleep. It was reckless and stupid, but so what? He had no other way of contacting the aforementioned god’s daughter.

Hela was pacing his dreamscape like a caged animal and just about pounced on him the moment he appeared.

“Where is he? What did you do with him? What did you do _to_ him? Is he okay? Did you even get him? Harry! Talk to me!” wailed the goddess, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him till his teeth rattled.

Breaking her hold, Harry took a step back and held up a hand to stave off any further questions or emotion-fuelled displays.

“I stunned him and brought him to my house which I have warded to keep him in,” he explained. “What am I meant to do with him?”

“Help him break the Stone’s influence!” exclaimed Hela as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. In a way, it was. However, that did not help Harry with figuring out exactly _how_ he was meant to go about doing that task.

“Very helpful,” he muttered sarcastically. “Maybe I should go back there and see if hitting him over the head works.”

The mist around him shifted eerily and Harry felt a chill go down his spine.

“Do that and I promise it will be the last thing you ever do,” hissed the goddess only for Harry to raise his hands placatory.

“I was just kidding,” he defended. “But seriously, you need to give me something to work with. How the Stones work or how are they created, anything!”

“I don’t know!” she moaned, going back to her previous panicked state. “They are the manifestation of each of the Yggdrasil’s branches of magic. It is said that they are crystallised magic in its purest form. That is all I know.”

“You said that we take magic away from the Yggdrasil to work spells,” said Harry, flopping ungracefully on the ground. “How did the Stones come to be? Did someone bind the magic to them like with the Hallows or did Yggdrasil do it by itself?”

“The Yggdrasil never lets go of magic by itself unless it is to bequeath it to a soul,” explained Hela. “That is how witches and wizards are made. They are souls that contain a seed of magic and that seed allows them access to the pool of magic present amongst the Yggdrasil’s branches. I don’t know how the Stones came to be, but I do know that some call them the Soul Gems. I’ve mentioned this before. Maybe they were once souls and the Yggdrasil did let them go, maybe they were bound, however all magic wants to eventually return to the pool, whether it was willingly let go or not.”

“Great!” enthused Harry, closing his eyes and preparing to drift off so as to wake up in reality. “I think I have an idea.”

“Harry, wait–”

::

“What do you mean you lost him?” raged Fury from one of the Quinjet’s screens around which huddled a remorseful Norse deity, an exasperated S.H.I.E.L.D special agent, a genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist and a stoic old American idol.

“Technically, we didn’t actually lose him,” replied Stark, earning the Director’s focussed disapproval upon himself. “He escaped.”

“You have been handpicked from hundreds for your skills and there are four of you!” growled Fury. “How on Earth could he possibly escape?”

“In our defence, we were a tad bit busy at the time,” protested Tony while pointing a finger at Thor who was doing his best to appear inconspicuous. It wasn’t working very well for the big guy.

“Sir,” interrupted the captain, “Thor says he can detect a magical signature at the scene of our battle that does not belong to any one of us or the fugitive.”

“Do you believe he is receiving assistance from a third party, then?”

“Affirmative, sir” confirmed Steve from where he was standing at perfect parade rest and pointedly ignoring Stark’s eye rolls.

“Any idea who it might be?” Fury seemed to be directing the question at Thor who was doing a fine impression of a kicked puppy.

“No one I have encountered before,” he answered with a small frown. “There are not many who could wield that much power in all the Nine Realms. I had thought I had encountered all of them.”

“Do you have any _leads_?” ground out the Director.

“We’ll keep looking, sir,” reassured Natasha, receiving an indescribable look from Fury.

“Be sure to do so,” he ordered with a nod before cutting the connection.

::

Harry rose from where he had been sleeping awkwardly on an armchair and turned to survey his unwitting guest’s condition. Loki looked half-starved and dirty, his clothes seemed to have been slightly singed in places and Harry could swear that was dried blood that stained dark patches on his undershirt. The man had been stunned with his eyes wide open in surprise and his mouth upturned in the beginnings of a growl, having registered Harry’s presence too late to react.

Despite everything, his whole presence spoke of royalty and the magic that coursed through his skin held an intoxicating quality that only comes with incredible power and skill. Under any other circumstances, Harry would have admired his presence and appearance, and maybe even tried to drag him home with every intention of feeding him till that hungry look disappeared from his eyes. If he had been hungry for anything more than food, Harry would not have protested. As it was, he could not focus on anything other than the wrongness of the blue sparks of magic that kept jumping across the god’s forest green eyes at random intervals.

With a quiet sigh, Harry pulled out his wand and reinforced the Stunning Spell before taking a seat on the coffee table right across from Loki. Locking eyes with the god, he muttered the next word and lost himself in those stormy eyes.

“Legilimens.”

::

All Aurors were trained in the basics of Occlumency, but few chose to also be trained in Legilimency. After his ordeal with Snape, Harry had been hesitant to try either, but upon finding himself easily erecting barriers to block others from his mind, he had chosen to pursue Legilimency as well. That did not mean that he was in any sense familiar with the art. This was the third mind he was entering and unlike his instructors’ clear and organised mindscapes, Loki’s gave him the sense of stepping onto a minefield.

Unlike the misty dreamscape he was used to when connecting his mind to Hela’s during sleep, what he encountered in Loki’s mind was a dark system of caves with their entrance to a cliff overlooking a stormy sea that would have never been found on Earth. Steadying his mind, Harry ventured deeper into the cave system, doing his best to ignore the impeding sense of dread and the sounds of creatures scampering in the shadows around him, they were a problem to address at a later time.

As he ventured deeper, Harry could feel the air becoming electrified as blue sparks made brief appearances, illuminating the surrounding walls and running along them. He knew he had found what he was looking for when he entered a cave which was bathed in light and crackled with the sound of electricity running along a naked wire.

At the very centre of the cave floor lay a prone figure around which blue and yellow magic fought in a battle of wills. The magic had knit a tight web around the creature Harry could now recognise as a Frost Giant from Hela’s stories. Blue electric sparks with a tinge of yellow wove through and around the blue body which seemed to be immobile aside from the vicious spasms that appeared every time a shock ran through it. Had Harry not known better he would have thought himself to be faced with an electrocution victim.

 Steadying his nerves, Harry approached the lying figure, trying to ignore the shocks he received from the magic. Kneeling on the ground beside the manifestation of Loki’s mind, Harry took a deep breath and grabbed the figure’s wrist tightly. All he knew before he was enveloped by pain worse than three Cruciatus Curses hitting at once was a pair of blood red eyes.

Fighting through the agony, Harry focussed on opening up his connection to the Yggdrasil only to sigh in relief when the foreign magic of the Mind Stone ran along the same pathways that had been carved by the Hallows’ magic returning to the World Tree. The process was excruciating. It might have taken twenty hours or it might have taken two minutes, but all Harry cared about was that at the end of it all, he had managed to siphon all of the Mind Stone’s magic out of Loki’s mind and back to the Yggdrasil.

When he opened his eyes once more, he was sitting in a cave that had fallen back into its original state of pitch darkness. The foreign magic was gone and there was no more danger. That is, until a creature started growling at him from less than a metre away and he started fearing for his life more than he had when facing the powerful magic.

::

Harry was thrown out of Loki’s mind abruptly and painfully, only for his physical body to also experience mirroring pain as he tumbled to the floor from the coffee table and stared dumbly up at a snarling God of Mischief.

“Um… Hela says ‘hi’?” he tried weakly.

::

“We can ascertain nothing further at the site, sir,” reported Natasha dutifully through her earpiece to Fury. “Stark has ran every scan known to man and Thor is no closer to identifying the third party’s energy signature.”

“What do you recommend, Agent Romanov?” asked S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Director impatiently. Natasha was sure her superior was developing a mounting headache in his quest to direct countless teams of people in collecting information about this latest disaster.

“Sir,” she began uneasily, mostly due to an escalating argument between Stark and Rogers taking place to her right, “we are in possession of the fugitive’s sceptre. The other Asgardian, Thor, says that Loki never abandons a magical source as great as this sceptre. It is his belief that his brother will either come for the sceptre or summon it to himself, allowing us to follow the signature back to his location. Either way, I think we should return to the Helicarrier. It is a more secure location than our current coordinates.”

“Very well. See that you make it back in one piece.”

::

Despite all odds, that one statement seemed to make the god pause. “Hela?” he asked in confusion before turning to anger once more. “How do you know my daughter?”

Harry scrambled back frantically before giving up and drawing his wand threateningly the same moment Loki made a green and gold sceptre appear in his hand.

“Look, can we talk this over like civilised people?” begged the young wizard in desperation. “Put the spear away, I’ll get rid of my wand and we talk.”

Loki looked at him for a long minute before nodding minutely. He waited for Harry to put away his wand and allowed the sceptre to disappear, even as he gathered magic in his hand and threw it at the young mortal before him. Harry felt the freezing cold magic run all over his body and shuddered. It gave him the same feeling he got when he stepped through a Killing Curse.

“You just tried to kill me, didn’t you?” Harry questioned the Norse god in bemusement. “Allow me to introduce myself,” he said with a mock bow. “Harry James Potter, Master of Death, at your service.”

With an annoyed huff at the Trickster’s frozen countenance, Harry threw a wandless wave of magic his way to make him stumble back onto the sofa and went perch himself on the loveseat opposite the god. Conjuring a tea set, he poured himself and his guest a cup before settling back and motioning for Loki to take his beverage.

“It is not poisoned, I promise,” he stated in bemusement, but wasn’t offended when the god refused to take the cup. “So here is the deal, Hela is annoying and conceited, but she is also a great storyteller and my best friend. She asked for a favour and I need some information from you if I am to see it through.”

“My daughter has never mentioned you to me. How can I be sure you are saying the truth?”

“I guess you are just going to have to trust me,” was Harry’s rueful reply. “If it makes you feel any better, she had not mentioned you to me either until six nights ago.”

“Nights?”

Harry could hear Loki’s anger stirring in that one word, much like a waking dragon and hurried to correct the misunderstanding. “She says it takes too much energy to actually visit so we only talk in dreams. I can assure you that there is nothing between is.”

“Why? Is my daughter not good enough for you?” Seriously? Was there no way you could win with this guy?

“She is great,” explained Harry and hurried to clarify when Loki went all growly again, “which is why we are friends. That being said, on the off chance that I go looking for a romantic partner I will sooner look at you than your daughter.” He could see that stopped the oncoming tirade on its tracks and the God of Mischief took on a thoughtful look. “Now that we established I’m around a 5 on the Kinsey scale,” continued the human wizard, “I need you to focus on the problem at hand right now.”

“Yes,” agreed the god. “You mentioned a favour.”

Harry signed impatiently. “Hela does not take well to her family being treated with anything less than respect. She has asked me to kill Thanos as I am the only one who can ensure that he will remain dead after the deed.”

“And why would that be the case?” asked Loki with a sneer. Harry hoped the guy’s attitude stemmed from the fact that he was on the defensive. It would be incredibly tiring if he was to keep it up for long.

“I am the Master of Death,” reminded Harry, “and Thanos is Death’s knight. Should anyone other than me kill him, he will just come back.”

“In that case, would you mind terribly letting me have a go at him first?” asked Loki mildly. “You can always get him the second, or better yet, the tenth time.”

“We don’t know how the resurrection process works. I’m not risking letting him escape.”

The god grumbled some more and tried charming Harry out of his decision, but ultimately came to accept it.

“What is it you require of me?” he asked at last, in a way that made it clear to Harry that he was not getting much of anything out of him.

“I need to draw Thanos here,” explained Harry. “For that to happen, you have to fail at your task, which from what I understand involved getting the Tesseract for him. I need to know what plans have already been set in motion so I can stop them before they yield results.”

“I sent the Tesseract off with Agent Barton of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” said Loki, after thinking about whether it was worth parting with the information. “His mission is to get the necessary supplies together to open a portal to Thanos so as to allow him through.”

“But Thanos is already in possession of two Infinity Stones,” protested Harry. “Couldn’t he simply use the ones in his possession as a key to open the portal for himself?”

“You know about the Stones?” asked Loki in interest and Harry tensed. He didn’t want _any_ power-hungry individual going after the Soul Gems. “You can relax, I know better than anyone how dangerous it is to try tame the Yggdrasil’s magic. I am not interested in experiencing the backlash that comes with trying to bend any of the stones to ones will.”

Harry relaxed, but only somewhat. “You ‘know better’? As in you have experience in the matter?” he fished.

Loki huffed. “It is true Thanos’ Stones act as a key to the portal, but the subsequent rip in space is unstable and only allows a single person through. Thanos views Midgard’s people as a worthy gift for his beloved. He doesn’t want a single person through, but rather his entire army. He sent me through with the Mind Stone to open the gate for them.”

“The Mind Stone is here?” demanded Harry in alarm. Well, this threw a slight hitch in his plans.

“Yes, I–” he broke off, seeming to remember something. “I’m afraid I might have released it into S.H.I.E.L.D.’s custody.”

::

What Happens Next [FAST-FORWARDED]:

Harry and Loki teleport onto the Helicarrier to reclaim the sceptre right in the middle of an argument between the Avengers and just minutes before Barton’s attack. Mayhem and destruction ensues, but Coulson does not die, Loki deals with Barton and his team (alongside Natasha), Harry takes care of the Hulk (quite literally, big green is nothing beside werewolves, Death Eaters and Voldemort), and S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers makes it through reasonably intact.

The two magic users attempt to reason with Fury and the team. The second listens, the first… not so much. Harry, Loki and the Avengers stage quite the escape from the Helicarrier. Barton is their kidnap victim who they leave to Harry’s tender mercies. Harry enters his mind to guide the Mind Gem’s magic to the Yggdrasil and find out the Tesseract’s location.

Harry uses his magic to extract the Mind Gem from the sceptre. He then touches it and guides its energy to the Yggdrasil, prompting Loki to kiss him (great feats of magic are apparently very arousing). Thor gives Harry ‘The Shovel Talk’ (much to the latter’s amusement) and then also gives Loki ‘The Speech’ (because he has obviously never heard of contraceptives). Tony is having a blast and can’t resist offering suggestions, the Captain has never been more embarrassed, Bruce uses this as an excuse for an impromptu Q&A on Asgardian (and Frost Giant) biology, Natasha flies the plane and keeps an eye on Clint (who is out for the count).

The team intercepts Dr Selvig and the Tessaract, Harry does his thing to the mind controlled people and to the Space Gem, rendering their power useless and the team goes for a snack.

Thor and Loki are stranded on Midgard until the Bifrost is repaired and Harry makes it pretty clear that he will not let Loki suffer any consequences for his actions no matter who demands it.

Harry and Loki start a proper relationship. They aid the Avenger team whenever they feel like it and use the All Father’s inability to travel as an excuse to release Loki’s children from their prisons (except Hel, who feels quite content with her existence as the one who carries favour with her boss’ boss). They also use the secret paths among the branches of the Yggdrasil to visit all the Nine Realms and collect any Gems they come across. They tap into Harry’s extraordinary magical reserve to Apparate all throughout the non-magical universe for the same purpose.

They come across an awakening force in a dark world and Harry does his thing, neutralising the Reality Gem. They come across a bizarre group of heroes who call themselves the Guardians of the Galaxy and help them fight against a fanatic (Ronan the Accuser) in exchange for the Power Gem. They come across Thanos and his Time Gem and take great pleasure in neutralising them both. Death is fuming (but united with her Knight), Hela is gleeful, the All Father paranoid, the Avengers busy and the Guardians shifty. It takes Harry a century to stop looking for the Soul Gem and it only happens when Hel finally takes pity and informs him that he took care of it while he still knew it as the Resurrection Stone.

Everyone lives happily ever after (with some living considerably longer than others). Tony and Pepper have one fallout too many which leads to Pepper finding true love in Happy and Tony setting his sights on the good Captain, Coulson realises life is too short after Clint’s stint as a flying monkey so he finally gives in to the younger agent’s advances, Natasha is grateful to Hydra for attempting to take over S.H.I.E.L.D. because it allows her to reconnect with her old flame and teacher, the Winter Soldier. Harry works with Bruce to help him gain control over his transformation and a rather nosy billionaire tracks down his old girlfriend, Betty Ross, who is still pinning for him. Thor, no matter what anyone says, was not the one who snuck Jane Foster a golden apple, but he is grateful to whoever did because it allows him to marry his, now immortal, love.

Harry and Loki’s romance becomes the stuff of legends and their arguments reserve their own place in history (especially after one such argument knocks down two of the Yggdrasil’s branches). They do have children together (because contraceptives remain a foreign concept to them both) and none of these children end up bringing about Ragnarok. Harry does not forget about Teddy and Loki does not forget about any of his other children, but they are both too childish and unpredictable to stay around children who are all but adults of their own by this point. Sad and happy and lazy and productive and silly times are had until the end of time when magic simply grows thin and the world unravels slowly and naturally, taking with it everything (in a slow, painless progression) including the universe, the Yggdrasil, Death, the afterlife and Death’s Master.


End file.
